Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Bificommander
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 43 | Sacrifices must be made | Steampirates of Bermuda | jam | 825 | 3.02 | 2.91 | 3.16 | 3.04 | 3.02 | 2.74 | |||
| 2017 | 40 | The more you have, the worse it is | 👥 | Helicopter Crate Overload | jam | 493 | 3.52 | 3.70 | 3.17 | 3.29 | 3.28 | 3.06 | 2.50 | 2.98 |
A very clever idea, but perhaps 3 months to live would've worked better. That, or more activities that take multiple days. I didn't end up finish the game, so I never found out if pouring money into medical research actually gets you a cure :p
An amusing point and click game, although it doesn't have too much interaction. The part where you're given a choice of what to say to the news doesn't seem to affect a lot, so the theme feels a bit of a stretch.
Great mood and a good idea for tense gameplay, with the single shot bolt. It's rather glitchy though. Apart from the zoom-in never seeming to hit, the villagers from the second village had horrendous pathfinding, just jogging in place for 10 seconds, then suddenly moving a few feet, then jogging in place again. Or sometimes not even bothering. Also, a werewolf killed me in the cathedral, so not too safe. Great potential for if you want to give it a bit more polish.
A hilarious game. The idea of a running story line with Ludim Dare games is cool too. On note: I once ended the level with 2 doors to go, got the orphan-flood cinematic, but then got the victory instead of the defeat ending. Don't worry, I finished honestly on my next game.
A very nice looking game, but while the stars spinning around with respect to earth was realistic, it gave me motion sickness.
The best game I've played thus far. Its hilarious theme make minor annoyances, like the hard controls and the kinda-crapshoot of what will constitute a ram or not part of its chaotic charm. Bravo!
A pretty fun game, but also a bit too easy. The first few levels I dumped everyone but the hero to defense and had half of them working. There was never an attack, so the guards did nothing, but I still cracked the 10000 resources without even noticing. Still, it has an amusing look and a fun foundation, it could just use a rebalance.
The window that opens in the HTML link is slightly cropped, meaning I couldn't read the name of some of the components (Navigation Pa....?) So I couldn't play too far I'm afraid.
This game deserves a lot more reviews than it has. It's fiendishly tricky, looks nice, and was brilliantly done. Unfortunately, I got stuck on 3-3, Rescue the bunny princess, because of glitches. When I moved my right bun into the bottom right corner to lure the hedgehogs, he would either get stuck on the rock or, after a few seconds of standing in the opening with the hedgehogs trying to push in, the bun would be teleported into the outer wall. This is unfortunate, since I didn't see how I could complete the level without luring those hedgehogs to that spot. See the screenshot for the problem area. Note that I have only 2 buns but no game over, because my third bun has disappeared.
bunbug.png
I hope the dev has time to review some other games to push this little gem higher into the cue of to-be-reviewed games. It's one of the best I've played, and I'd be a shame if it didn't hit the 20 ratings.
Hey miziziz. I got past the level. I was basically doing what the walkthrough suggested, it's just that when I went down too far near that red circle I tended to get stuck on the stone. And if I stayed in the opening too long while the hedgehogs were trying to push into a hole they couldn't get into, I could get teleported. By following the walkthrough and not waiting in the opening with my lure-bun, I could finish the game.
I hope you don't mind, but I made a post on the main page trying to get more people to your game. I felt your game deserved the extra attention. (I just hope not too many people will assume this is a sock-puppet account :p)
Fun game, but I haven't been able to reach the city once. Since there isn't a single resource of which having more doesn't screw you over. Which is why I rated the theme as 5.
A fun little game. The graphics are simple but fitting (though I agree, some outlines on the buildings would be nice if you're gonna promote putting blue buildings on blue tiles), and the chaotic plethora of beams during battle give me that sweet TD rush of watching an enemy horde faceplant itself on my defenses.
Regarding the theme though: The game gets easier as the map grows, since I can make my spiral path of AoE doom even longer (if there's a better strategy than hemming the enemy in along a spinal path made up of AoE towers, I haven't found it).
And as a last note: Perhaps add some visual feedback of what the slow-towers are doing (or, if that already exists, make it clearer).
The game crashed whenever I died. Otherwise, nice concept, but with the enemies not leaving the screen or dying on their own, I haven't found much ability to make a comeback once the stronger enemies get to the bottom. You have to follow them down to protect the crystal, and by the time they're dead, new enemies have already gotten to the bottom, so you're stuck.
AVG doesn't like this file either, so I can't give a rating.
Edit: So I was able to play it. Perhaps I don't understand it too well, but I found it wasn't very hard to kill the bubble shooters, nor very important if you didn't since they can't hurt you. If you get overloaded with bubbles, you can just shoot them away in a few seconds. And since those bubbles can't hit the ships that actually do kill you, there's not much point in not doing so immediately.
And yeah, those spawning ships very often spawn right next to you, dealing collision + bullet damage immediately.
A very neat game, with a nice list of features. The coded numbers were fun, although it meant a lot of alt-tabbing for the morse code. If I might suggest a small tweak: A fade in and fade out for the scary music.
This was a tricky but satisfying one. Even after I figured out how I needed to win, it still took me forever. Including one time where I tried to jump to the exit, pressed space by mistake and killed myself with that one too many use of my powers. Speaking of which: Perhaps a little more clarity on what constitutes a skill use would be useful. I think it was dashing and attacking that did it, but I'm not 100% sure.
A very nice looking game that I would've rated even higher if it weren't for the bugs. The incorrect descriptions on what the buildings do is annoying, most of the rats didn't show up to actually attack, and I got an error when trying to save the game. Also, some visual feedback of the towers shooting the rats would've been nice. Still, an impressive atmospheric game.
Very nice game. I managed to hit 382 seconds. While at first I found it hard to gauge my movement against the flat grey background, I got the hang of it eventually. And the bleak aesthetics really sells the feel of the inevitable extinguishing of your frail spark. Although (and this is my nitpickiest suggestion yet) my avatar being a big fat square felt a bit... too massive, too solid to fit with the rest of the vibe I was getting. A narrow diamond shape (like the card-suite) would've felt more like a spark to me.
But hey, if that's the most substantial criticism I can make, you're probably doing something right.
Surprisingly tricky to play. As a side note, I like those dynamically forming constellations (I assume that's what they are) in the start menu. Would've been fun to see those in the game as well in some way.
It's a fun game. Just one bug though: I got off the elevator while it was moving towards the next floor. That left the elevator on a different floor than me. When I entered the elevator shaft, I fell through the level into the void.
It took a few tries but I completed the three levels. (For those stuck on earlier levels, putting orbs back on higher laying altars to pause the flood is key) The controls are rather tricky, which means that even when I thought up the solution, it took several tries. Levels 2 and 3 have to be run almost without error to complete once the water starts pouring. Perhaps a top down camera, or at least not a 45 degree isometric view that makes it hard to remember which way is which would help. Also, a restart button might be nice, so after a fuck up you don't have to wait until you've drowned.
Overal a cool concept that fits with the theme, slightly held back by the controls.
Masdow: Sorry to hear that. We did run it on one Linux computer, and though the sound didn't work it did run. I don't have a Linux machine myself, nor a triple monitor setup (It worked on two monitors), but maybe my partner can look into it. No promises though.
About flying under the water: Yeah, we added a Unity Terain that you can collide with, which continues under the water, but it's only a limited size. Since we never got around to making boundaries, you can fly over the water past where the terrain is. We probably should've put a huge box collider below the whole thing.
About controlling the camera: I didn't put any other options in since I figured you'd need both hands to fly anyway. I could've tried some options to tweak the auto-camera, but to manually control the camera... I dunno, maybe with a controller I could've assigned the d-pad for that. But optimizing the game for using a controller is another thing we didn't get around to.
@miziziziz : I was pretty set on a control scheme that used two hands. My inspiration was Battlefield Vietnam, where I just had tons of fun flying the choppers, even though I'd crash regularly. Which, sadly, leaves no hands for the camera. Maybe if I had more time I could've made multiple auto-camera settings, but alas.
And on that note, that's also the reason for the crates being tricky. Bigger crates weren't really an option because they made it harder to pick up a second crat, since the first crate blocked the magnet. What we wanted was that crates attached to the magnet from a little further away. Trouble is, if we turned that on we couldn't get the crates to move closer, and the bigger collision volume from the magnet would snag on the ground. In the end we resorted to giving the crates a little push towards the magnet when they were nearby, and still only making the crates stick upon a direct hit.
The first link gives a 404, the executable+source code link immediately sets off my antivirus program. So I'm afraid I couldn't try the game.
I just love the theme of games that feature a basic heroic story, but playing as someone other than the typical heros.
The original file crashed to the point I needed to restart my computer while the fan was going crazy, so my review is of the bugfixed version.
An impressive game with far more features than would be expected. The game wasn't quite as slow-paced as the comments lead me to believe, even though it obviously isn't a twitch shooter. My number one suggested improvement would be to use a different color scheme for ships and the base. I had a hard time finding my newly build ships that spawned over the base. Also, perhaps the menu screen music you created could play during gameplay as well? It's very quite right now (yeah yeah, no one can hear you scream).
Luckily I made a Unity game too, so I had that .dll myself. The game is a mixed bag. The levels looks really nice, but the player and monster models don't fit with them, and it's pretty hard to guess when the enemies will hit you. Also, I may or may not have experienced a bug: When the second level started, my health bar was suddenly almost empty, yet nothing that happened (health pick ups, enemy attacks) seemed to affect it anymore.
This is a great idea, well executed. I wish I had a second player to properly give it go with.
A very nice looking game, with a fun theme, but without any real gameplay. Also, if I'm going to be a diabolical shadow government leader, it's a shame I don't get to see anything from my evil plots except a number of people killed. Perhaps a few ICBMs flying around the globe, I mean disk, when I start a war would've been fun.
Cool and thematic concept, a bit tricky to play alone, but I can certainly see the multiplayer fun potential. I'm thinking running lean to get ahead, then devour all the insects to starve the other player.
Given how few keys are needed, I could even imagine having a 3 or 4 player mode.
The audio and graphics are great, but I didn't find the gameplay as enjoyable. At the first puzzle with 2 buttons the goat only bothered to stop for the carrot about 10% of the time. I got stuck after opening the first gate, because when I took the path back to the goat and stood on the button to open the gate, another gate closed behind me and I couldn't find any way to open it again, leaving me no way to bring the goat up. No other commenters seem to have a problem with it, so it's quite possible that I simply suck at this game and missed an obvious solution. I played the original version, so perhaps it's also easier with the fixed version.
So, amazing production values but sadly not fun enough for me to keep trying to get through it.
@linear PS: Thinking about it after a night's sleep, I think I see what I should've done at the part where I got stuck (the elevator to the bridge goes all the way down, I can probably toss the goat on it). So that part was just me being tired and sucking, not an error in the level.
I'll admit, it wasn't until I read the comments that I figured out how to beat the last level. Even if I managed to weather the storm of missiles until the station's ammo ran out, I never had enough ammo left to put a dent in it, and the fighters lasers seemed so pitfully inaddequate to thin out the missile storm. But in the end, I had gotten the game's genre wrong. Well played sir.
This is certainly one of the most complete game experiences I've seen this jam. Playing a lovecraftian monster with card battles is orginal and entertaining. I did run into some bugs though. One battle where my secrecy just wouldn't drop below 0 but I couldn't end the combat because I couldn't pick up the reward, and entering combat without an opponent. But this certainly has potential as a full game.
A very amusing and tinker-ish game. Unfortunately I got repeated crashes when trying to confirm completion of the "Sacrifices... for Science" quest line. This was my error:
___________________________________________ ############################################################################################ FATAL ERROR in action number 1 of Draw Event for object oPlayer:
Variable oCollisionManager.
@justcamh : It isn't very clear, but you can demolish machines. You have to look at them, select them (so you see a textbox with a description), then press the delete convery belt button.
I would normally say that not being able to rearrange the whole map at will is more fun, but since the room size is limited and you have no way of knowing what else you need to build...
This may very well be my favourite entry yet. The neon look was striking (any chance you could post a link to the source code? I'm curious how those kinds of graphics are made in Unity), the gameplay solid and the sacrifice theme was implemented well. I like how you get so many mulligans, yet your sacrifice total is told at the end so you can go back and beat your record. Very well done.
@wolar: Thanks a lot for the extra effort. I'm going to have a look at it, and hopefully I'll be able to implement something like it in future (jam) games.
A very nice looking concept. The dying to solve the puzzles was a good implementation of the theme, it just didn't feel like much of a sacrifice without any lives or score. Then again, I died an embarassing number of times, so a hard lifecap might have been too harsh. But perhaps use that ending level to give a final tally of how many poor slime girls you got killed with your incompetence or something could be an easy tweak to the theme.
The level design was a mixed back, with ingenious shortcuts but also weird paths to nowhere and oddly placed traps. Still, graphically it was quite impressive. Out of curiosity, did you attend this year's Berlin Unity Conference. I was there, and the Robby Robber tutorial I did there looked a bit like this game design wise, with the tiles and lighting.
This is your publisher. I'm afraid we're dropping your game and your studio from our lineup. This is purely due to our internal shift in priorities and has nothing whatsoever to do with our company being a bunch of jackbootlickers who will do anything to keep that sweet, sweet Chinese market open.
A very nice and polished experience. The intro movie was a nice touch, and the TBS gameplay was solid. It could've stood to be a little harder though. It took a while for me to figure out that there was a "weapon triangle", but I still only had some slight difficulty with the last mission. (Or was it part of the social commentary that the protesters get curbstomped?)
@guoboism The first part was just a joke, never mind it.
A very fun if teeth-grindingly difficult game. It is so very, very easy to take the wrong action when defusing the bomb, and since that's an immediate game over, I never made it past day 4.
I agree that a progress bar for officers would be a good addition.
There's quite a bit of content here, having multiple stages to the level is very nice. The audio... wasn't too good. I presume it was deliberately ridiculous, but it was used too much for it to remain funny.
It's a testament to this game's cool core concepts that I enjoyed my time despite 3 of my 4 playthroughs running into problems. It's fun to experiment, move around and kill, and there's a good variaty of powers you need to do without. Now as to those problems:
My first playthrough I stopped because heal was bound by default to a, not q, which is of course also move left. I had to alt-f4 my way out and change it.
My second playthrough I tried to rush through the tutorial, and at the last point pressed q before I took damage. Since there weren't any enemies to kill to recharge healing, I was now stuck and had to do the whole tutorial again. I think the tutorial is great, but it takes a non-insignificant amount of time and isn't skipable if you start the game from scratch. I know you can restart if you complete, and I assume if you die (I never did, permantenly anyway, thanks Hades!), but I didn't find any way to restart on command except alt-f4, which put you into the tutorial again.
My third playthrouh I ascended. Huray!
My fourth playthrough I wanted to try keeping different weapons. However, when I got to the first warrior boss cube, I tried Hermes-Dashing, which knocked him remarkably far (is he lighter than regular enemies?), over a wall, and out of the level. Now I couldn't reach him or kill him. At which point I decided it was time to fill in the rating :)
And as the last two points, a lot of walls got invisible if the camera was closed, and I don't know if it's on purpose but I couldn't tell the difference between wizard-cubes with 3-round bursts and single shots until they shot me.
Still, like I said, I'm quite impressed with the core gameplay. Most of the problems I encountered are easily patchable should you feel like a post-jam version.
@pompi-pompi On my PC the healing key was bound to "a" by default. In the Unity Launcher you can check the controls and change them if you wish.
A good looking game, and the timed-rubicube gameplay was a neat original idea. But the fun was hampered by the unreasonably short timeframes in which you're allowed to rotate. Even if you see a way to rotate your squadron to let the astroids pass through, you'll probably fail because you can at best rotate twice before the astroid hits.
Also, the game doesn't actually end if you complete it it seems. It just loads a new system name and no astroids appear. I couldn't even see my final score.
I got eaten by the zombies on every playthrough (the spawnrate for jobs at the end seems to get low) but I had a blast nonetheless. A very complete package for a jam, with a comedy style that nicely combines laughs and cringes.
I don't suppose the source code is available somewhere? There were plenty of small tricks and techniques in this title that I'd like to find out more about. I see you already explained a bit about the markers, which is one of them: That was supposed to be in my game, but with time running out and no way how to even start I just had gave all the targets an audio loop with falloff volume and called it a day. Very cool how you managed to get a good system working.
Neat implementation of the theme. The playing field was a bit small, leaving you little room to maneuver. And with enemies being as fast as you, there's little you can do on the keyboard if one gets behind you. It might not have been a bad idea to remove the keyboard controls altogether, or not make them default. The mouse is indeed a lot easier.
A very nice concept, but I found it hard to figure out what determines income. Having 4 houses and two chicken pens, buying an extra chicken in one pen increased my income, but buying one in the other decreased it. Plopping down a gold mine(?) also seemed to decrease it. Also, I agree with @alleskapaul , the colors, especially the green grass, aren't very easy on the eyes.
@aevek: Glad to hear you liked it. I was in such a rush at the end, I didn't have much time to polish up the gameplay loop. I'll check out that itch link.
@corbak: The steering is quasy-deliberately. I did want there to be quite some drifting, but I'll admit I may have gone overboard. I tweaked those controls on the first day, when I didn't have enemies yet, and these settings were kind of fun to just zig-zag between obstacles. But I didn't rebalance them when it became time for the actual gameplay. And yes, I think I will make a version with the UI added, plus some other minor tweaks. Bigger gameplay elements like the big merchant ships shooting back were also planned, but adding that seems a bit too much.
@aevek, @corbak: I made the updated version if you want to give it a try (and aren't already up to your armpits in games to play)
@edwingamedev If you press escape in-game there's a list of controls. The basic movement is WASD + mouse, Q and E fire broadsides, 1-4 sacrifice various crew members.
@rumor Point taken on the inertia. There are the green lights on the side of the ship showing when the broadside is up, but indeed there isn't a timer to see how far along you are. The considerable reload length was added so there'd be a point in maneuvering to bring your other broadside to bear, but I admit it didn't feel as fun to play as I'd hoped. As far as further updates, I was originally planning to do this type of ship-combat with space ships, but when I saw the theme I decided seagoing pirates made slightly more sense. But I think I'll use the spaceship idea for further developing, (apart from variaty, that's also the reason I wanted to include a ray-weapon) although I might release a second bug-fixed version based on further feedback.
@kruemelkeksfan Yes, I also noticed picking up loot without helmsmen gets very hard. Although you could probably use the fact that the loot always comes out on the right of the ships to be in the right place from the start. My personal best score is 51/54, and I'm up to a little over 1 crewmember per ship looted, but that's admiteddly with knowledge of the ships' general routes. I didn't think the zoom-in got that bad, but the effect is indeed a bit stronger than it ought to have been. Woopsie on the typo. If I do another update, I'll also try out a bit of spread to the cannon balls.
Thanks for your feedback everyone.
@syrok Thanks for the review. The drifting is going to be rebalanced if I do another fix. The controls are probably going to stay as they are though.
@elitegoliath Thanks a lot! I'm happy the graphical effects worked out well. I didn't have a whole lot of experience with them, so most of it was started from scratch and learning as I went. I didn't have time to implement a wake-effect, but the rest looks decent. I hope you're right about my talent, in a few months I'm going to try to make an actually releasable game, one that's tangentally related to this one but with spaceships. Wish me luck :)
@benjouille Thanks, glad you liked it.
@wowbagger That would be the Eldritch Horror haunting Bermuda. Its evil aura is visible but its true form is hidden in the darkness at its core. This is done to heighten the mystique and fear, and not at all because I had no idea how to make a tentacled monstrosity within the deadline :p
@henry-denny Yeah, there are in-game instructions accessed by the esc-key, but that's not mentioned anywhere. I ran out of time to make a proper start menu where the How To Play was properly signposted. I'm working on a last Post-Jam version that at least says how to access the in-game menu, and fixes the controls. But glad you liked the graphics. The particle effects are the one thing in this game that I'm really pleased with.
This is a good looking, highly atmospheric game. The grim start screen and the bloodsplatters as the battle rages are a nice touch.
My main beef is how long it takes to fight, and that there is no time acceleration option. Even on heavy attack, it takes a long time and on defense (which from what I saw does give a much better k/d ratio, but I'm not sure) it takes forever. In fact, the defense of my third city is being fought as I write this, and it shows no signs of stopping :p I'd add a time-accelrator option (which of course also increases the losses in your other cities), combined with a bit more insight on what the effect of the various settings actually are.
But still a very original concept. A post-jam version with rebalanced combat and insight has good potential.
This is some superb level design that, combined with the theme, leads you to assume one solution when a harder but better one exists. I don't think the character abilities should've been explaind as some suggested, as that would ruin the effect. Thanks for making me feel like a smarty pants by letting me figure out the twist ahead of time from the title alone. I gave the theme 5 stars, because I love the evil subversion you made with it.
One note: I ran into a bug where pressing R resetted the level with all the characters missing, so I had to start the game over.
A cool game concept. The game is somewhat tricky to control, and damage is pretty unavoidable when squeezing through the narrow gaps between the huge astroids, but hey, sacrifices must be made, right? It's also fun that you have to balance the number of sacrificies, because keeping everything means you won't make it, but ditching everyone makes you accelerate way to fast. I gave into peer pressure and ditched the fat friend right from the start though :p
I do agree that rotating makes the game so difficult to control that it might as well be scrapped. Strafing isn't perfect but it gets you to the end much easier. Maybe making the rotating function less "sticky" would help.
Hey, all my goblins made it on my second try. Guess I got a good run of "luck" there. Makes up for letting only one traumatized goblin survive on my first go.
The choose-your-items start was a cool idea, but I never needed any items besides food, water and the bow. Though I presume there are random events that need the others too. This page's screenshot shows some injured goblins, I'm guessing that's what the bandages were for.
The bleak mood is very good, although the goblin-narrated opening felt a bit too lighthearted. Perhaps it was meant to let us know of the innocent mindset of our golbins before sending them on through their ardeous journey, but it didn't really work that way for me.
Nonetheless, a good, atmospheric entry.
A fun and graphically impressive title. Is there a finish state? If so, I kept dying before I reached it.
The main suggestion I'd want to give is to improve the feedback the player receives. There's no indications you're getting hit, no indication an enemy is going to teleport, the white dying flashes are visible but also obscure a lot, and I couldn't notice any charge-indicator on the weapon.
This is a very ambitious title with a great concept. I like the look, the sizable map, and the mechanical ideas. What the game still lacks is polish and balancing. I started the game bankrupt because there were no fires in the first two years, and I was dinged 500 bucks upkeep cost regardless. Then I got dinged for the sizable body counts of my house fires, but all the casualties happen before my truck and car even got to the left edge of the map. And with the water-radius of the engine being small, forest fires are hard to deal with. Having the response team clear what you hope the next spreading locations of the fire (which sometimes jump over an empty hex, and sometimes don't) and then twiddling your thumbs as the blaze burns itself out was all I could do. I found selecting and moving units around also a bit finicky. I often found myself moving the wrong unit because I'd selected the wrong unit and didn't know. The models not ending their move on the center of the hex didn't help with that. In short, I really like the puzzle concept of this game, but there's currently a bit too many random and/or unclear mechanics that leave me feeling that my failures are beyond my control.
@eric-smith A possible, and easy fix for the no-fires problem: Give a 500 dollar bonus for keeping the town fire free for a year. That cancels out the 500 dollar upkeep. A speed-up option would indeed be a good way to get rid of the wait for an isolated blaze to burn itself out.
A pretty neat looking game, especially the arena. As others have mentioned, it would've been nice to have a little bit of (audio) feedback when firing or getting hit. And as for the sacrificing, I kept tanking one gun's accuracy every time and nothing else. At some point the extra 40% off of the already minute accuracy made little difference, and I had still had one long-range gun if I needed it.
I'll admit, I didn't get the last level. I got to within 150 of the target, but that tiny twisting letterbox where I couldn't even tell which way it was turning was too much for me. And dodging turret fire does feel a bit RNG-ish. Still, a lot of fun to be had here. Well done.
This is a wonderfully looking game. I assume that the earth and skybox were the assets you didn't make for the jam. If so, consider the effects and the space ship models to be rated 4 stars.
The mechanical concept is certainly cool, although it lacked some transparancy (How much faster does my gun recharge with 2 pips? What's the difference between bolt and laser? What hits can and can't my shield take). Also, the idea of sacrificing orbital height for extra speed sounded like a great fit to the theme if it had had a bit more impact.
But this is certainly a wonderful game for a jam, and one I'd be interested to see further refined.
A good looking title that uses the theme well. It would've fit even better if more of the difficulty increase came from the sacrifices, rather than the increasing spawn rate. But there were definitely some very interesting sacrifices to make, with good "builds" emerging ("I already sacrificed vision, so I might as well sacrifice my attack range since I can't see those enemies anyway")
This was certainly a novel and theme-fitting take on the Tower Defense genre. I personally disagree that you should get coins for killing enemies or clearing waves. It really fits the theme that you can only get cash by sacrificing your high level units. It ultimately works the same as kills->coins, but you have to decide when to sacrifice a high level unit to build several low level ones. Of course, to make that choice more meaningful, something could be done about the game balance, specifically the enormous spike at level 10.
Other small suggestions: A how-to page, with some descriptions of the various units and the basic sacrifice mechanic, a way to get back to the main menu (if there is a shortcut key already, put it in the how-to guide), and a fix to the names of units when you click on them (mage is also archer there, and priest is in a different language). Somewhat more involved suggestions might be a small color change or aura on higher leveld units to easily spot them, and making mages deal splash damage so level 10 isn't completely impossible.
But despite the lack of polish, I commend this game for its fun and fitting resource mechanic.
Edit: I see the itch.io page does list what the units do and what the basic gist is (I never figured out what knights were for). Maybe put that info on this page too, I missed it when I played it.
Never have I been so eager to have a fat guy go crowd surfing. A neat concept, with great visuals and awesome audio.
I just managed level 1, but that's as far as it went. This game is pretty hard.
It's a solid, functional game, but without much of a wow-factor.
I'll give you points for originality if nothing else. This was almost dadaist game design. But that did mean solving the puzzles felt less "aha!" and more "okay... so that's how it goes apparently" And yes, I did make it to the good ending.